maija reads Archives - Tachyon Publications

October 3, 2022

With THE UNBALANCING, R. B. Lemberg delivers a compelling book about real people with LGBTQIA+, disability, and neurodivergent representation

Rick Klaw blog birdverse, bog odea, book riot, booktubesff, interview, just geeking by, maija reads, paul semel, r b lemberg, review, rey rowland, rick hellman, the four profound weaves, the unbalancing, university of kansas

The recently released THE UNBALANCING by R. B. Lemberg continues to receive praise from the likes of Just Geeking By and Maija Reads as part of #booktubesff. Rick Hellman for The University of Kansas interviews Lemberg about the importance of names in the Birdverse. On his ubiquitous site, Paul Semel also interviews the author. For John Scalzi’s The Big Idea, they write about pronouns. And finally at Book Riot, Rey Rowland discusses the Birdverse novella THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES in “Weaving Magic: 8 Fantasy Books with Magic Systems based on Art“.

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Lemberg has written a wonderfully compelling book about real people with LGBTQIA+ representation, disability and neurodivergent representation. This is my first introduction to Lemberg’s Birdverse and I look forward to spending more time in the gorgeous world they have created.
Just Geeking By

More importantly, the author said, as canonized in the Birdverse works:

“Deepnames can be triggered by invocation — either spoken out loud or whispered or even spoken inside the mind. Then you can do magic with it. You have the magical ability to see it. It’s like a star or constellation that floats around your head, and we can use these geometrical structures to affect the world.”

“It’s a neat magic system that is based on language, because in order to acquire deepnames, but also in order to know what to do with the deepnames, you need to understand how language is produced. It really has to do with breath; how you train your breath to produce particular sounds. … I love when readers geek out over this magical system and ask me details. It’s awesome.”
The University of Kansas

As I mentioned, THE UNBALANCING is your first novel, but you’ve written novellas, short stories, and poems. Are there any writers who you feel had a particularly big influence on The Unbalancing but not on anything else you’ve written?

Aleksandr Grin. He is a Russian-language writer and revolutionary from the turn of the 20th century who wrote stories about fantastical Crimea. I am from Ukraine, and my grandmother’s best friend Raya lived in Crimea. We used to go there in the summers when I was very young. Grin’s writing resonates with me both because of my childhood and how fantastical those places were, and because of the strange, fragile lyricism of his work, his unapologetic imagination which is often described as “romantic” — I don’t describe it as romantic necessarily, it’s rather like sea glass to me — muted and varied and lyrical and strange. It’s just very dear to me. The name Gelle-Geu is inspired by one of his fantastical cities, adjusted for archipelago phonology.

The Russian Federation’s violent wars have brutalized the landscapes of my childhood and caused so much suffering to Ukrainian people. It is a source of endless pain and rage for me.
Paul Semel

THE UNBALANCING is the first novel in my long-standing Birdverse fantasy world. Since the very first Birdverse story in Beneath Ceaseless Skies back in 2011, Birdverse has been a place which centered queer and trans people. LGBTQIA+ people in Birdverse do not always have it easy. Some countries and cultures are more accepting and welcoming than others, and people who travel or migrate between different places might be shocked by the differences in language and culture that make space for people like them – or take it away.

In THE UNBALANCING, I wanted to imagine queer utopia. The archipelago is a place of refuge for people who do not fit in their home countries. The society of the islands is welcoming and carefree, celebrating the many expressions of gender and sexuality. One of the key features of archipelago culture is its recognition of women, men, and ichidar. Ichidi (plural ichidar) is a word which roughly corresponds to our nonbinary gender. But nonbinary gender is not monolithic – neither in our world, nor in Birdverse. The islanders recognize “the five ichidi variations”, which are represented by words and animal symbols accompanied by lyrical sayings for each variation.
The Big Idea

Cover by Elizabeth Story based on initial concepts by Francesca Myman

Last but not least, weaving is a beautiful art form, and I love that this novella uses it to create such a unique magic system that has characters weaving different materials like sand and bone as if they were cloth. THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES in “Weavin follows a weaver named Uiziya, who is looking for the master weaver to learn the final weave. Then there’s a nameless man who struggles to find where he belongs. The two travel together to find Benesret — but there’s a price for what they want out of Benesret, and it may be too high for them to pay.
Book Riot

September 1, 2020

Happy book birthday to R. B. Lemberg’s remarkable THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES

Rick Klaw blog book birthday, book tube, maija reads, Publishers Weekly, r.b. lemberg, review, tachyon publications channel, the /temz/ review, the four profound weaves, the novel approach reviews, traveling in books, youtube 0

Today, September 1, Tachyon welcomes their new child, R. B. Lemberg’s acclaimed debut THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES, now available from all finer booksellers.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY includes the birthday book among their Books of the Week, August 31, 2020.

Lemberg’s outstanding debut novel expands on the short stories of the Birdverse that they have been publishing for about a decade, most frequently in the lit mag Beneath Ceaseless Skies, drawing readers into a lush desert world and the two elders from different cultures navigating its wilds.

TRAVELING IN BOOKS concurs.

THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES is a remarkable story, and not simply for the heartbreaking and beautiful ways in which it deals with gender norms, cultural expectactions, family, and friendship. In just 192 pages, Lemberg weaves a multi-facted story in which two aging characters still have a lot to learn about themselves, their strengths, and their flaws. Although, while the prose is elegant and lyrical, its beauty can sometimes obfuscate the meaning. But this is a minor issue overall, as it detracts very little from the story. With elegant prose and an understanding of human nature in all its genders, Lemberg weaves a golden tale of human longing, friendship, and hope.

Then they double down with another mention in Sunday Sum-Up: August 23, 2020.

THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES is a beautifully written novella about a world where, in certain cultures, the ability of people to change gender is assumed and the transformation is a celebrated part of life, if one so chooses. But there are cultures that do not accept these changes, which makes life difficult– if not impossible– for those who wish to change. It’s also a story about love and family, and the sacrifices we must make in order to make the world a better place.

THE FOUR PROFOUND BOOK WEAVES book trailer premiered on the Tachyon Publications YouTube Channel. After you finish with the trailer, be sure to check out the other Tachyon goodies on the channel.

Amy Mitchell for THE /TEMZ/ REVIEW continues the love.

THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES packs an enormous aesthetic and emotional punch, especially considering how short it is. No details are wasted, and everything knits together in complicated, compassionate and dreamlike ways. It’s a mature look at how life can always still be celebrated, despite the pain and wasted time that people can increasingly feel weighing on them as their lives progress. It’s also a profoundly moving and intimate look at the harms that are specifically caused by transphobia, homophobia and gender-based violence. I highly recommend it for all readers, even if fantasy is not normally a genre you frequent.

THE NOVEL APPROACH REVIEWS joins the celebration.

THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES is an emotional story, at times intense and brutal in its telling, but nothing less than sincere. Its beauty is in its weaving of words into a fantasy steeped in its characters’ truths and desires.

MAIJA READS adds ther thoughts about the beautifully written novella.

March 16, 2017

CENTRAL STATION is a genuine pleasure to read because it feels “real”

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized central station, holly best, lavie tidhar, livelib, maija reads, maureen kincaid speller, review, russian, sarah anne langton, thank the maker, the anglia ruskin centre for science fiction and fantasy, you tube

Lavie Tidhar’s excellent CENTRAL STATION continues to garner a lot of attention.

For THE ANGLIA RUSKIN
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, Maureen Kincaid Speller praises the quotidian tale.

I start with Achimwene because he reminds us that one of the central themes of Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION is the telling of stories, and science-fiction stories in particular. Indeed, the narrative itself is an embodiment of a pivotal moment in sf storytelling: the move from short story to novel. The earliest sf novels weren’t novels as such; they were formed from several closely connected short stories, sometimes reworked to strengthen those connections, and were known as ‘fix-ups’. CENTRAL STATION is a fix-up par excellence, bringing together Tidhar’s various Central Station stories, some of them substantially reworked, with a couple of new stories added to the mix, and a Prologue that introduces the novel as an act of storytelling, while itself participating in the act of storytelling not once but twice.

Fix-ups, embedded narratives – there are already many layers of story at work and the novel has barely begun. It will, though, take a couple of chapters for the reader to notice that CENTRAL STATION isn’t so much one story chronologically narrated as a series of stories, a mosaic, if you like, and if the reader knows Ray Bradbury’s MARTIAN CHRONICLES at all, the general ambience of the narrative may seem begin to seem somewhat familiar. Those who have read C.L. Moore’s ‘Shambleau’ will recognise the term when it is used in Chapter Five: Strigoi. Likewise, the reference to St C’mell might call forth a memory of Cordwainer Smith’s ‘The Ballad of Lost C’mell’. And if not, that doesn’t matter either, because, while CENTRAL STATION rests on a foundation composed of all these stories, and many others I’ve either forgotten or never read, it doesn’t rely them to tell its story.

<snip>

And that, I think, is probably the most significant message CENTRAL STATION has to offer us: even in science fiction, that so-called literature of the future, nothing lasts forever. The symbolic tropes – space ships, robots, AIs – will all eventually be absorbed and become part of the scenery. I’m not talking about decay or decline. There is rarely a moment when one thing is actively replaced by another, in a single moment. As we know even now, different technologies can co-exist alongside one another for years in the right circumstances. Central Station suggests to me that the familiar tropes of traditional sf will continue to exist quite happily alongside the genre-busting stories I love so much but that their continued existence relies on the willingness of authors like Tidhar to look at them from a different angle.

There comes a time in a man’s life when he realises stories are lies. Things do not end neatly. The enforced narratives a human impinges on the chaotic mess that is life become empty labels … (163)

That’s what I see going on here. CENTRAL STATION is not clinically futuristic; instead it is quotidian. And in being quotidian it offers the space for so many things that readers and critics of science fiction have argued for – ordinary women going about their daily business; a diverse cast of characters drawn together by likely circumstance rather than authorial anxiety; space travel being no more important than bus travel; people just about making ends meet, like most of us do; a future in which the ordinary and the extraordinary continue to meet and collapse into one other, much as they’ve always done, and a literature in which, while the past provides a foundation for the future, it does not insist on continuing to shape that future. Tidhar offers us a messy human future, in which people, using the term in its widest sense, live, love, bicker, experience fear, joy and wonder, a future which never quite comes to a neat and tidy end. As such, although I tend to avoid traditional future narratives, CENTRAL STATION is a genuine pleasure to read because it feels ‘real’ to me in a way that so many future narratives don’t. I said before that too many futures I read about don’t seem to have room for me in them: this is a future that does.

Holly Best at THANK THE MAKER enjoys the book.

Lavie Tidhar has created a far-reaching fantastical future that feels concurrently alarmingly exotic yet satisfyingly familiar. Within a short timespan we peak into the lives of an interwoven group of people, all, searching. The story of life, the need for acceptance, the desires and sorrows of the heart remain true, whatever the century. This is the story of the every man, woman, robot, sentient creature, data-vampire, that falls in love, finds religion, eventually losing both all the while managing to survive. It is the story of family – the need to remember and the cost of holding too dear to that very past.

CENTRAL STATION breathes new life into the genre – more so thanks to it’s non-American slant, bringing this SF story to Tel Aviv, highlighting Judaic culture, mingling the elements of the migrant. CENTRAL STATION is not an everyday space story, just as this does not appear to be your average snow storm.

The Russian LIVELIB gives the novel, 5/5.

The main feature of the novel is that it does not give answers. He does not end at all in mid-sentence and does not leave the reader in reflection, how really everything was. Tidhar acts more subtle and more refined. He shows a piece of the world that is on the verge of change. We will never know what will happen next and why some events are happening – will children from genetic laboratories become the first step towards posthumanity and the rejection of the mortal body in favor of virtual reason? Why does the mysterious wanderer Eliezer create gods, and what do the last of them represent? Was Carmel cured of her vampire affliction? What is actually the mysterious nakaimas and what do the Others talk about in their mysterious and untranslatable language? All these questions hang in space, stretch invisible threads into the future, which will not come, because the novel does not presuppose continuation. This is an ideal example of how to leave details to the reader. Someone will be annoyed by this approach, someone will give an inexhaustible scope for imagination and guesswork, but the main message that life goes on, and it does not matter in what form is beautiful and amazing. CENTRAL STATION leaves a wonderful aftertaste, pleases with vivid, voluminous and very different images; Charming, if not lyrical, pictures of the world. Levi Tidhar created an amazing story, both human and not so, oriented to the future and full of memories of the past, combining nf reality and fantasy fantasy, all in organic proportions.

Translation for Russian, courtesy of Google.

MAIJA
READS trys the first chapter of the intriguing CENTRAL STATION.

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and image by Sarah Anne Langton